HEPHAESTUS (Gr. Hephaistos), in Greek mythology, the god of fire. As the distribution of his shrines testifies, he was origi nally a deity of that Anatolian population known to the Greeks as Carians. The home of his worship seems to have been the Lycian Olympus, where a quantity of natural gas still escapes from the soil. This was in antiquity "at once the sanctuary and the image" of the god (Max. Tyr. Dissert. ii., 8). Hence the cult spread to other places in Asia Minor and to some islands, especially Lemnos and Moschylus, which it reached very early. Hephaestus became the god of fire in general, and consequently the divine smith and patron of craftsmen. His cult reached Athens not later than about 600 B.C., and was carried at an early but unknown date to the volcanic Liparaean Islands off Sicily, whence it spread sporadically to Sicily and Campania. Crete it never reached, and Greece proper, with the exception of Attica, hardly at all. Natural fires, volcanic or gaseous, were often. con sidered to be the workshops of Hephaestus.
In Homer the fire-god was the son of Zeus and Hera, cast out from heaven, either by Zeus, when he fell on Lemnos, or by Hera, who threw him down immediately after his birth in disgust at his lameness, when he was received by the sea-goddesses Eurynome and Thetis (Iliad, i. 59o; xviii. 395).
The subsequent return of Hephaestus to Olympus is a favour ite theme in early art. His wife was Charis, (in the Iliad) or Aphrodite (in the Odyssey). The connexion of the rough He phaestus with these goddesses is curious; it may be due to the beautiful works (xapcisraipya) of the smith-god, but it is pos sibly derived from the supposed fertilizing and productive power of fire, in which case Hephaestus is a natural mate of Charis, a goddess of spring, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love. In Ho mer, the skill of Hephaestus in metallurgy is often mentioned; his forge was on Olympus, where he was served by images of golden handmaids that he had animated. Similar myths are found in relation to the Finnish smith-god Ilmarinen and the Teutonic Wieland; a belief in the magical power of metal-work ers is a common survival from an age in which their art was new and mysterious. In epic poetry Hephaestus is rather a comic figure, and his limping gait provokes "Homeric laughter" among the gods. It has been suggested that in an early stage of society the trade of a smith would be suitable for the lame ; Hephaestus and the lame Wieland would thus conform to the type of their human counterparts.
At Athens, with its large industrial population, Hephaestus was an important god. He finds a place in the local myths (see ERECHTHEUS). His temple has been identified, not improbably, with the so-called "Theseum." It contained a statue of Athena, and the two deities are often associated, in literature and cult, as the joint givers of civilization to the Athenians. The class of artisans was under their special protection; and the joint festival of the two divinities—the Chalceia—commemorated the inven tion of bronze-working by Hephaestus. In the Hephaisteia (the particular festival of the god) there was a torch race, a cere monial not indeed confined to fire-gods like Hephaestus and Pro metheus, but probably in its origin connected with them, whether its object was to purify and quicken the land, or (ac cording to another theory) to transmit a new fire with all pos sible speed to places where the fire was polluted. The relation between Hephaestus and Prometheus is in some respects close, though the distinction between these gods is clearly marked. The fire, as an element, belongs to the Olympian Hephaestus; the Titan Prometheus, a more human character, steals it for the use of man. Prometheus resembles the Polynesian Maui, who went down to fetch fire from the volcano of Mahuika, the fire god. Hephaestus is a culture-god mainly in his secondary aspect as the craftsman, whereas Prometheus originates all civilization with the gift of fire. But Prometheus despite his Greek name, in actual cult, was largely superseded by Hephaestus.
In archaic art Hephaestus is generally represented as bearded, though occasionally a younger beardless type is found, as on a vase (in the British Museum), on which he appears as a young man assisting Athena in the creation of Pandora. At a later time the bearded type prevails. The god is usually clothed in a short sleeveless tunic and wears a round close-fitting cap. His face is that of a middle-aged man, with unkempt hair. He is in fact represented as an idealized Greek craftsman, with the hammer, and sometimes the pincers. In art no attempt was made, as a rule, to indicate the lameness of Hephaestus; but one sculptor (Alcamenes) is said to have suggested the deformity without spoiling the statue.
See L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, v. (19oo) ; and the classical dictionaries, especially L. Malten in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. (1912) . See also VULCAN.